Chernobyl new hot spot for tourist

50,000 people visited area last year, with 70 percent of them foreigners

CHERNOBYL, Ukraine－Camera? Check. Sunglasses? Check. And a Geiger counter? Check. For a growing number of thrill-seekers visiting Chernobyl's radiation-contaminated lands the device is used to help navigate the site of what remains the world's worst nuclear accident.

The uninhabited exclusion zone, a 30-kilometer radius around the former nuclear power station, has seen a surge in tourists in the past few years.

Almost 50,000 people toured the area last year－a 35 percent rise on 2016－to see the plant that contaminated a large swathe of Europe when its fourth reactor exploded on April 26, 1986.

Nearly 70 percent of visitors were foreigners.

"(I wanted to) see something totally different," said Maja Bandic, a Croatian in her 50s, who described the day as "amazing".

A souvenir kiosk at the main entrance to the exclusion zone sells T-shirts and fridge magnets with the black-and-yellow radiation warning symbol as well as Soviet-era gas masks.

It is even possible to stay a few nights in a basic hotel or one of two hostels near the power station.

Viktor Kharchenko, whose travel agency Go2chernobyl.com has run tours to the site since 2012, said the growth in visitor numbers came after the 30th anniversary of the disaster in 2016 and the installation that year of a huge metal dome over the damaged reactor that significantly reduced radiation leaks.

These developments were widely covered by international media and alleviated people's fears over whether it was safe to visit Chernobyl, Kharchenko said, arguing that the risk to tourists is minimal.

"A day's stay in the area equals two hours of flying over the Atlantic Ocean in terms of the dose of radiation absorbed," he said.

But one of the tour group member, Joel Alvaretto, a 28-year-old student from Argentina, confessed he is "a little afraid" of radiation, since he has heard "you can see the effects later, many years after".

Leaving Chernobyl, everyone has to go through radiation checks. Members of the tour group take turns to stand inside a large dosimeter which indicates that they are all "clean".